Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington

After reading this short excerpt by Booker T. Washington I was able to learn a lot about why he believes African Americans should stay in the south and not go up to the north where everyone was wanting to go. In this excerpt Book T. Washington gives many different reasons and the first reasons is because of the huge amount of people all going there at once. All the African Americans wanted to go up to the north because they felt like they could find much better jobs than they could find in the south. This caused a huge influx of people in the north and all that would o is make a lot of the “good” jobs that the African Americans wanted would soon be taken anyway. Booker T. Washington likes to talk about how in the south there are many of the same opportunities that there are in the north. Just moving to the north wouldn’t solve anything for them because everything they need is in the south. He also likes to talks about how African Americans believe that working in the fields is in a bad thing. He talks about how using your brain isn’t the best thing for everyone and that working in the fields isn’t a bad thing at all. Working in an office works for Booker T. Washington, but he says that it isn’t for everyone. One last example tat he uses to say why African Americans shouldn’t move to the north is because he says that it shows they feel the north is better than the south when in reality they are mostly the same and that working in the fields is not the only thing you can do in the south. These are some of the reasons why Booker T. Washington believes that moving to the north from the south is not the best idea.

Comparing Equiano to Venture Smith

In both stories of Equiano and Venture Smith they both have their similarities and differences. The similarities between the two is first they both live in tribes that they care very much about and for. Also both characters were able to take different characteristics from their tribes. Venture Smith was able to take the trait of being trustworthy from his tribe. Equiano on the other hand took the trait of being cheerful and friendly.

Those are the similarities between the two, but I believe that they have more differences between each other. The first difference between the two is their values. When Venture Smith first leaves his tribe and goes off he proves that he can keep his trustworthiness. Then it all changes when Venture Smith is free and starts buying being with money and starts making them work for him. Venture Smith starts doing this when he gains his freedom and starts to learn about money. This shows he is not trustworthy though because he is buying people and making them work for him and then when they die he just gets mad because he loses money. This shows that he has no values that he learned from his tribe. Equiano on the other hand keeps his values from his tribes and tries to learn more about it. He keeps his cheerful and friendly self. These are all of the similarities and differences between Venture Smith and Equiano.